What does it mean that we live in a fallen world?

Man’s sin has put him out of true relation to God and therefore we live in a world of flux, of change, of decay, of death—a world sodden with tears and soaked in blood. Changes come that are catastrophic, bewildering, staggering, upsetting. It is no mere platitude to say in the words of Scripture that men’s hearts are failing them because of fear. It is a grim and dreadful reality. Fear is in most hearts today. It is common talk that the present war will annihilate civilization, and let loose terrible forces of disruption and utter disaster, the like of which the most vivid imagination cannot exaggerate.

In considering the fall of man we are apt to concentrate on the dire consequences for the human race, and to lose sight of what that dreadful event meant for God. The consequences of the entry of sin were certainly enormous, and this is seen as we find almost the whole human race swept away at the flood because of the corruption and violence that filled the old world, and as we see the condition of the world today even where there are the external benefits that have been brought by Christianity. Sin brought with it a guilty and defiled conscience, alienation from God and enmity with Him, the principle of sin in man’s nature, and all the sorrow, suffering and death that fill the world. What man did to the Son of God in putting Him on a malefactor’s cross showed what man in his nature, and in his disposition towards the God who has showed him nought but good.

I. Man was created innocent. His state in innocence was one of dependence upon God, subjection to Him, and communion with Him; of entire freedom from disease and death; and of headship over a creation which God had blessed and pronounced very good. But Satan, working on man's self-will and unbelief, brought in sin, and all was ruined. Man lost the sense of dependence upon God and gained an evil heart of unbelief. He exchanged subjection to God for subjection to Satan; communion with God for alienation and a desire to hide from His presence. He became the prey of disease and death. The physical world, the very ground, was cursed for his sake, so that from that hour the “whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” But while the first man is thus ruined, God speaks of One named the “woman's seed”, to whom the earliest promise is given. Adam had been overcome by Satan; but the woman's seed was to vanquish the victor, and though Himself wounded in the conflict, was to crush the head of the destroyer.

With man God's moral processes begin. There were none before the fall. Adam was placed as the centre of the system on the earth, and lord of all. But he quickly fell from his exalted position. One act of sin, and immediately all was changed. Ruined, banished, sin and death at work in his nature, his condition on the earth and his relationship to his Creator became altogether different. Labour and sorrow are now his lot, and the fair body which God pronounced good, after a few years to be resolved into dust, out of which it was made.

Our first parents fell. The blue sky of innocence was obscured. The cloud of death like a funeral pall hung over their spirits. Driven out to a cursed earth, to thorns and thistles, to the sweat of the face, to sorrow in a conception and in childbirth, and to death, sin was indeed a terrible reality.

It has cursed, sterilized, and blighted the whole scene from that day to this. The world is one great graveyard, full of disease, pain, sorrow, anguish, tears, and death. But is God defeated? Is Satan triumphant? Assuredly not. Here comes the wonderful story, and we begin to see how sin can be allowed by God for His glory. There is only one word in Hebrew for sin and sin-offering.

But in spite of all man's fine talk, the fact remains that God says man fell, that sin came into that fair garden of delights, and man was driven out under sentence of death. "So He drove out the man" is still written against Adam's race. And experience tells us that this world we find ourselves in is no garden of innocent delights, but a world of sorrow and toil, a world of thorns and thistles, a world of pain and death.

We are in a world of sin and misery, and whichever way we look we behold the sad effects of the work of the enemy. For nearly six thousand years - ever since Eve, the mother of us all, ate the fatal fruit - disease and death have been destroying everything upon earth; nor is the moral effect of sin less conspicuous. Violence and corruption have been irrepressible, and no panacea has been found for either temporal or spiritual disorder.

What a contrast to this present creation! We read that “the whole creation groans and travails in pain together till now” (Rom. 8:22). How sadly true is this statement! Everywhere we look there is sin and sorrow and sadness and death. Death marks all mankind for his victims It seems as if the enemy had triumphed. Politicians endeavour to right things. A few years of strenuous effort and they sink under the intolerable burden of their tasks. Generations come and go, and humanity does not learn the lessons of history.

Through one man, says the great apostle, sin entered into the world, and death through sin. When man fell, "dying thou shalt die" began; and Adam was only a father after he sinned. The race is a fallen one. Physical maladies are the symptoms and evidence of the mortality that is the portion of every child of Adam. Nor did he deny the sufferings of this present time, though he counts them not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed toward us. For we know, says he, that the whole creation groans together and travails in pain together until now.

First of all, "the whole creation" groans and travails in pain together. This was the case when the Apostle Paul wrote these words, and it certainly is so now. In these words the fist reference is to the lower creation, which has been dragged down by the fall of man. Dominion was given to Adam over all, and by his sin he ruined all. He was, so to speak, the top link, intelligently connected with the Creator, with all other links in the chain dependent on him. When he fell, all creation fell with him; animals became wild and destructive. We may not have ears to hear the groan of the lamb or kid as the leopard pounces upon it, or of the fly as, entangled in the web, it feels the spider's bite; but the groaning is there.